Chapter 20

The "top-off silver" mentioned by Ji Bochang referred to the practice where, when a vacancy arose among the clerks in the various departments, the incoming official had to pay a departure fee to their predecessor. This fee was not uniform across the six departments; it was determined by how much "oil and water"—or graft—a position generated. For instance, the top-off silver for the Personnel Office typically started at fifty taels, while the Works and Justice Departments required at least two hundred. The cheapest was the Rites Department, which could be settled for thirty. Zhao An was currently seconded to the Revenue Department; if a permanent vacancy were to open up, he would need at least one hundred taels as a baseline. In other words, as long as his performance regarding the cloth workshop project met with Master Ji’s approval, the man could save him that hundred-tael fee. Considering that his total annual income—including all the various gray-area earnings he would receive as a Revenue Department clerk—amounted to about one hundred taels, this meant he would have to fork over a full year's salary just to become a formal member of the Yamen staff. There was no room for bargaining unless a superior chose to advocate for him.